Our testing methods
Before burying you under a deluge of benchmark graphs, let's take a quick look at the mix of rivals we've put together to face the Scorpio Black 750GB, and the methods we use to test storage devices here at TR. We include these details to help you better understand and replicate our results, but if you're already familiar with our approach to storage testing, feel free to skip ahead to the benchmarks. We won't be offended.

The Scorpio Black's most direct competition comes from other 7,200-RPM notebook drives. We've tested the latest ones from Hitachi, Samsung, and Seagate, plus a few entries from Western Digital's own stable. Seagate's Momentus XT mechanical/SSD hybrid is included in the mix, as is a stack of solid-state drives that share the same 2.5" form factor as the Scorpio. For comparative reference, we've also included results from a collection of 3.5" mechanical drives. Below is a chart outlining several key characteristics that can affect the performance of the contenders we've lined up.

Flash controller

Interface speed

Spindle speed

Cache size

Platter capacity

Total capacity

Corsair Force F100

SandForce SF-1200

3Gbps

NA

NA

NA

100GB

Corsair Force F120

SandForce SF-1200

3Gbps

NA

NA

NA

120GB

Corsair Nova V128

Indilinx Barefoot ECO

3Gbps

NA

64MB

NA

128GB

Crucial RealSSD C300

Marvell 88SS9174

6Gbps

NA

256MB

NA

256GB

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

32MB

500GB

1TB

Hitachi Travelstar 7K500

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

16MB

250GB

500GB

Intel X25-M G2

Intel PC29AS21BA0

3Gbps

NA

32MB

NA

160GB

Intel X25-V

Intel PC29AS21BA0

3Gbps

NA

32MB

NA

40GB

Kingston SSDNow V+

Toshiba T6UG1XBG

3Gbps

NA

128MB

NA

128GB

OCZ Agility 2

SandForce SF-1200

3Gbps

NA

NA

NA

100GB

OCZ Vertex 2

SandForce SF-1200

3Gbps

NA

NA

NA

100GB

Plextor PX-128M1S

Marvell 88SSE8014

3Gbps

NA

128MB

NA

128GB

Samsung 470 Series

Samsung S3C29MAX01

3Gbps

NA

256MB

NA

256GB

Samsung Spinpoint F3

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

32MB

500GB

1TB

Samsung Spinpoint MP4

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

16MB

320GB

640GB

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

32MB

500GB

1TB

Seagate Barracuda LP

NA

3Gbps

5,900 RPM

32MB

500GB

2TB

Seagate Barracuda XT

NA

6Gbps

7,200 RPM

64MB

500GB

2TB

Seagate Momentus 7200.4

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

16MB

250GB

500GB

Seagate Momentus 750GB

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

16MB

375GB

750GB

Seagate Momentus XT

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

32MB

250GB

500GB

WD Caviar Black 1TB

NA

6Gbps

7,200 RPM

64MB

500GB

1TB

WD Caviar Black 2TB

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

64MB

500GB

2TB

WD Caviar Green 2TB

NA

3Gbps

5,400 RPM

32MB

500GB

2TB

WD Caviar Green 3TB

NA

3Gbps

5,400 RPM

64MB

750GB

3TB

WD Scorpio Black 320GB

NA

3Gbps

NA

16MB

160GB

320GB

WD Scorpio Black 500GB

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

16MB

250GB

500GB

WD Scorpio Black 750GB

NA

3Gbps

7,200 RPM

16MB

375GB

750GB

WD Scorpio Blue

NA

3Gbps

5,400 RPM

8MB

375GB

750GB

WD SiliconEdge Blue

JMicron JMF612

3Gbps

NA

64MB

NA

256GB

WD VelociRaptor VR150M

NA

3Gbps

10,000 RPM

16MB

150GB

300GB

WD VelociRaptor VR200M

NA

3Gbps

10,000 RPM

32MB

200GB

600GB

Although it might not seem like a fair fight, we've thrown in results for a striped RAID 0 array built using a pair of Intel's X25-V SSDs. The X25-V costs less than $100 online, making multi-drive RAID arrays affordable enough to be tempting for desktop users. Our X25-V array was configured using Intel's P55 storage controller, the default 128KB stripe size, and the company's latest 9.6.0.1014 Rapid Storage Technology drivers.

The block-rewrite penalty inherent to SSDs and the TRIM command designed to offset it both complicate our testing somewhat, so I should explain our methods in greater detail. Before testing SSDs, each is returned to a factory-fresh state with a secure erase, which empties all the flash pages on the drive. Next, we fire up HD Tune and run full-disk read and write speed tests. The TRIM command requires that drives have a file system in place, but since HD Tune runs on an unpartitioned drive, TRIM won't be a factor in those tests.

After HD Tune, we partition the drives and kick off our usual IOMeter scripts, which are now aligned to 4KB sectors. When running on a partitioned drive, IOMeter first fills it with a single file, firmly putting SSDs into a used state in which all of their flash pages have been occupied. We delete that file before moving onto our file copy tests, after which we restore an image to each drive for some application testing. Incidentally, creating and deleting IOMeter's full-disk file and the associated partition doesn't affect HD Tune transfer rates or access times.

Our methods should ensure that each SSD is tested on an even, used-state playing field. However, differences in how eagerly an SSD elects to erase trimmed flash pages could affect performance in our tests and in the real world.

To make our massive collection of results a little easier to interpret, we've marked the SSDs and 3.5" mechanical drives in different shades of grey. The 2.5" notebook drives are color-coded by manufacturer, at least in the bar charts, and there's a multi-colored rainbow to cover the line graphs. You should be able to spot the Scorpio Black easily; it's colored in black throughout the graphs.

With few exceptions, all tests were run at least three times, and we reported the median of the scores produced. We used the following system configuration for testing:

You can read more about the hardware that makes up our twin storage test systems on this page of our VelociRaptor VR200M review. Thanks to Gigabyte for providing the twins' motherboards and graphics cards, OCZ for the memory and PSUs, Western Digital for the system drives, and Thermaltake for SpinQ heatsinks that keep the Core i5s cool.

The test systems' Windows desktop was set at 1280x1024 in 32-bit color at a 75Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.

Some further notes on our methods:

Noise levels were measured with a TES-52 Digital Sound Level meter 1" from the side of the drives at idle and under an HD Tune seek load. Drives were run with their PCBs facing up next to our open-air test bench.

For our power consumption tests, we measured the voltage drop across a 0.1-ohm resistor placed in line with the 5V and 12V lines connected to each drive. We were able to calculate the power draw from each voltage rail and add them together for the total power draw of the drive. The drives were tested under a load consisting of 256 outstanding I/O requests using the workstation access pattern. Power consumption was also probed while idling at the Windows desktop one minute after halting our IOMeter load.

Most of the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.